Consultation on the New Local Plan by Rochford District Council, Site CFS064
Land bounded by Folly Chase, Betts Farm Estate, Hockley Community Centre, the railway line and Hockley Primary School.
Please accept this as my comment on the above proposal. Not wishing to blow my own trumpet, I believe that there is no one who knows more about this piece of land and its surroundings as well its past and present uses. I am a lifelong Hockley resident, moved to Folly Chase when I was four months old, (remaining there until I married in 1976), and my parents still lived there until they passed away in the last couple of years. This area was my childhood playground.
I went to Hockley Primary School (at the old site), then became a governor of the school two years before it moved to Chevening Gardens in 1983, and remained as a governor for 38 years, of which I chaired the Board of Governors for 33years. I still chair the Parent and Community Advisory Board. At least one of my immediate family has been at HPS, either as a pupil or a governor, continuously since 1960.
Our family building contracting won the contract to design and build Hockley Community Centre in the early 1980’s, and I worked on and personally supervised the works as they took place. After the centre opened, I became a member of the Community Centre Committee for six years.
I am also a keen and very active Hockley Historian.
Given my experience of the locality, I sincerely believe that to build 214 houses on this parcel of land would be devastating for number of social, environmental and practical reasons.


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I list below these reasons:
Environmental Reasons

Most importantly this land is bounded on three sides by pieces of ancient woodland, Betts Wood, Folly Wood and Bluebell Wood. Part of Betts Wood is owned by Hockley Primary School, and in the early 1990’s the school tried to make it suitable for use by the pupils. To do so it needed to fence it off, for safe guarding reasons. Before this work was undertaken RDC’s Woodland Officer at the time, [name supplied], came and surveyed the woods and found that there was growing in there some Wild Service Trees, which are extremely rare. I was told that these trees only ever grow in undisturbed ancient woodland, that has existed for thousands of years. This shows that these parcels of land almost certainly were part of the woodland that covered Hockley from at least the middle ages. To risk losing this by developing all around these parcels of woodland would be a criminal act.

Given its clay and sandy sub soil, Hockley has numerous underground waterways. The land from the top of Fountain Lane, Hockley, through to the piece of land that forms the proposal, are riddled with these. Despite being at the one of the highest points in the area there is even a spring at the top of Fountain Lane. Having built around this area, and personally dug at least ten sets of foundations in Folly Lane and Folly Chase I can vouch for these underground streams. Close to the bottom of Folly Chase is a pond that provided irrigation, via a wind pump, to Oaklands Nursery in Folly Chase many years ago. This pond still exists and is always full of water, fed by the underground waterways. In the middle of the proposal site there I, I believe, a large well, that was dug for the use of Bluehouse Farm, which once stood on the site in the 19th century. This would surely would have been filled by these underground sources. This well is clearly shown on past OS maps. To use this land for housebuilding now, would disturb these waterways and could potentially cause devastation to the local area.

Westminster Drive was built at the same time as we were building the Community Centre. I understand that this is under consideration as the access to the proposed site. When it was built it was built as access to the 50 or so homes that are on the road, and the Community Centre. It is not designed as an access road for a further 200 houses. It is narrow and used for off street parking and has a sharp bend at the bottom of the slope. Quite simply this road is not suitable. The environmental and safety risk to the existing residents would be great.

The land in question has been farmed for as many years as records exist. It is clearly Green Belt farmland and should remain as such.


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Social Reasons

There does not appear to be any consideration as to the infrastructure to cope with yet another 200 houses in the immediate are. Hockley Primary School has been oversubscribed for years, and given its constrained site, there would be little opportunity to substantially extend the school, for the use of potentially another 200 children. The school would need to expand by around 50% to accommodate this number. Similarly, there are no Doctors surgeries within a short walking distance, and those that are in the village simply cannot cope now with the numbers of patients they already have.

This is not the first time this site has been suggested for development. Around 10 years ago, agents for the owners contacted the school and asked if it would consider selling a piece of land on the corner of the schools entrance and playing field in Chevening Gardens to form an entrance to the site. There was also an offer of a land swop to extend the school playing field and create some much needed car parking.
The school was then self regulating, and so governors took advice from its own agents. Following a great deal of research and discussion the governors unanimously took the decision not to take this forward, for many of the reasons already noted in this letter, and because of the impact it would have on its pupils, surroundings and its neighbours, who they have to live with. (As Chair, I declared an interest, and took no part, as I knew some of the site owners from when I was a child). However, It is clear that the reasons to refuse this application now, have already been harboured for many years.

There is clearly a public footpath that runs across the proposed site. This is not just any old public footpath, but one of the oldest and most important footpaths in Hockley. It should not be destroyed or deviated in any way. This footpath is shown on Ordnance Survey Maps in the 1870’s. This path was a Coffin Walk, used by the residents of the Eastern parts of Hockley to carry their dead to the Parish Church Graveyard. When the railway was built in 1887-9 a large cutting needed to be dug across the route of this path. As it was so important, Great Eastern Railway were forced to build a very large and very expensive footbridge over the cutting in order to maintain that part of the path. This bridge still stands today and in circa the 1970’s British Rail were then forced to spend a considerable sum to refurbish it and make it safe and usable, for the same reason.






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Practical Reasons
I am somewhat confused by the suggestion that The Community Centre entrance is to be used as an entrance to the proposed site. Having been involved with the Community Centre from before Day 1, I am aware that that one of the reasons the Councillors, at the time, took the decision to site the Centre where it was, was to stop the legally aggressive and unseemingly unstoppable march of developers Wimpeys across the old Betts Farm Land. As well as being a much needed amenity for the village, The Community Centre was built where it is sited to protect the Green Belt Land behind it. Will the present Councillors agree to simply override the wishes of their predecessors?

With regard to the Community Centre, if its entrance and adjacent land is proposed to be used by the developers/land owners to access their site, how or have they obtained the land? As I recall the Community Centre was part funded by RDC, Hockley Parish Council and also by The Community Centre Association itself, by local fundraising and membership, and as such, these were all part owners. Has each of these groups given their consent?

The public foul sewer that runs across the Community Centre land to the bottom of Folly Chase serves the residents of Folly Chase and also, I believe, now (or will) the residents of The Pond Chase Nursery development in Folly Lane. This connects to the main sewer in Westminster Drive. This sewer is not large and at where it connects to the main sewer it is very shallow. Indeed, as you drive into The Community Centre there is a noticeable hump in the driveway as it had to be raised simply to get over the top of the sewer. Given that there is already an issue with the sewer capacity in Hockley, has this been taken into consideration, notably as the site is somewhat lower than the surrounding land and drainage, both foul and stormwater, will be serious issue for the site. There are already several large stormwater culverts that run through the grounds of Hockley Primary School from the Betts Farm Estate towards the railway.

There are other Brownfield sites in the village that could be taken into consideration for future development, the old railway siding at Hockley Station and the land behind the station building in Plumberow Avenue for example. These should be considered before using prime Green Belt farming land.